15 Best Books of Summer

15 Best Books of Summer
By Grace Fell

Summer is the season when things (hopefully) slow down for many of us. School’s out, vacations begin, and you may be lucky enough to have extra free time to kill. What better way to keep yourself entertained and hooked on something other than your phone than a good book? Below we’ve listed 15 new releases for you to read on your airplane to vacay, the beach, or the couch while you escape the heat.

The ABCs of Being Mom by Karen Bongirono

Another guidebook for those in the trenches of motherhood! Focusing on the oft-forgotten parenting skill of self-care, Karen Bongiorno addresses the changes parenthood brings to life, the importance of a support systen, taking time for personal restoration, and the need for both parents to equally participate. This little book is encouraging, supportive, and understanding that all moms go through harder times. If you’re looking for help managing motherhood so you can have more time for your family and yourself, then The ABCs of Being Mom is all you need this summer.

Your Fully Charged Life by Meaghan B. Murphy

Summer reading requires at least one book to help you relax and feel brighter than the sun, and Meaghan B. Murphy’s high-energy guide to living with presence, optimism, and joy will have you feeling like your best. Her infectious positivity springs forth from her writing as she teaches you to cultivate gratitude, making meaningful connections, learn to say no, recharge when you need it, and spread positivity. This is a practical, accessible guide to keeping from wallowing in negativity and endless pints of gelato and instead come into the best version of yourself. What’s more summer than feeling like sunshine?   

Dream First, Details Later by Ellen Marie Bennett

Now that you’re feeling your sunniest self, it’s time to get focused! Ellen Bennett is coming at you this summer with a gutsy guidebook designed to help you stop procrastinating on your goals, stop obsessively worrying, and spring into action. She shares her own journey and the forged-in-the-fire playbook that came from it to help you get started with whatever you’re dreaming of before you get in the way of yourself. Three cheers for positive mental attitude! This honest and bold illustrated book will be like having Ellen encouraging you the whole way through.

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

An instant New York Times bestseller, this heartfelt and unflinching memoir by indie rockstar Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast should be a no-brainer for your summer reading list. Zauner chronicles growing up Korean American, forging her own identity, and losing her mother with lyricism that flows as radiantly on paper as it does in her music. This memoir is a rich telling of family, food, grief, and endurance, contrasting the unfamiliarity of finding oneself with heaps of comforting food. Zauner’s writing is so dazzling that you’ll feel the rays of the summer sun bouncing off the pages.

Overcoming the Mom-Life Crisis by Nina Restieri

Alright, for moms reading this: we know summer can be tough with the kidlets out of school. It can be too tempting to take care of the little rugrats running around and not make time for yourself, but if you read any book this summer, read this one. Nina Restieri, a mom of four kids herself, is here to tell you she knows you deserve more than you’re giving yourself. In this excruciatingly honest but essential handbook for the overwhelmed mother, Restieri shares her own experience trying to keep up the “perfect mom” appearance and learning how to take care of herself, too, not just her kids.

Write My Name Across the Sky by Barbara O’Neal

Summer just isn’t summer without at least one juicy book, and bestselling author Barbara O’Neal squeezed this one by hand. This is a tale of two generations of women reconciling their interwoven family secrets and past regrets - from old flames being arrested for theft and forgery, to disastrous relationships and anger issues - that could either destroy each of their futures or bend their bonds. Three women - Gloria Rose, Willow, and Sam - learn that you can’t escape your past - or the FBI. O-Neal knows how to keep her reader from putting her book down, making this a perfect summer read.

Competitive Grieving by Nora Zelevansky

If you’re feeling June gloom this summer, you need not look any further than Competitive Grieving for a slightly heavier topic. In Zelevansky’s hilarious, thoughtful reflection on life and death, our main character Wren has just lost her childhood best friend, Stewart Beasley. While she grapples to even begin to understand how this has happened, she finds herself surrounded by the absurdities of death like memorial buffets, processional songs, lawyers, and the left-behind friends of Stewart. His friends are so unlike the man she thought Stewart was that she begins to wonder: do we really know our friends? Or ourselves?

Anarchy in High Heels by Denise Larson

Larson’s witty and wise memoir on her artistic growth and confidence as a woman is the perfect inspiration for your summer. Dancing through her memories of the taboo-busting underground scene of 1970’s San Francisco, Denise Larson moves through her experience of the young woman’s liberation. What began as an after-hours countercultural event transforms into Les Nickelettes, a band of brazen, like-minded women with anything-goes spirits and deeply suppressed satirical humor that had previously been hidden to conform to society. With all cares gone, this sisterhood goes on to take on all the forms they were naturally meant for - and for Denise, that meant playwright, stage director, producer, and more.

Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen by Inger Burnett-Zeigler

An informative exploration into the interconnectedness of Black women’s strength and suffering, Dr. Inger Burnett-Zeigler examines how the image of the strong Black woman does not always acknowledge the trauma those women have endured, from sexual abuse, domestic abuse, poverty, childhood abandonment, victim/witness to violence, and regular confrontation with racism and sexism. This critical guide is so important for acknowledging Black women’s collective trauma, but also for showing Black women how to prioritize their selves and find the beauty in their strength and vulnerability. If you’re looking to educate yourself this summer as well as feel interconnected with all women, this book is for you.

The Sound Between the Notes by Barbara Linn Probst

If you’re a mom who’s sacrificed for your children or if you’ve lost hold of your passion, you’ll love this one. Susannah has never forgiven her adoptive mother for putting her second to her selfish wants. Now, Susannah has sworn never to do that to her own kids and puts her career as a pianist on hold. When the opportunity finally comes for her to join an elite group of musicians, however, she learns that she has a degenerative disease that makes her fingers cramp and curl, and Susannah is drawn deeper into her memories and the question: Who am I, and where do I belong?

The Liability of Love by Susan Schoenberger

Susan Schoenberger brings us a summer romance with heart-breaking depth. Margaret Carlyle is searching for young love as she heads to college in 1979, still heartbroken from the loss of her mom to cancer. But then a seemingly charismatic boy rapes her on the first date, and that night continues to follow her through the rest of her relationships. When he becomes a famous actor, Margaret is unable to escape what he did to her, and the decisions forced in her face will affect her, her husband, and the man who has patiently pined for her since college. This enrapturing novel examines class, privilege, and the mysteries of relationships.

everyman by M Shelly Conner

We embark on this story following Eve Mann on her journey to discover her identity, her name, her people, and her home. Her mother died giving her life, and Eve’s search for answers about the parents she’s never known launch a multigenerational story that stretches back to the turn of the twentieth story, from the soil of the South to the savage embrace of the North. This is a coming-of-age story with the heart and soul of the Black Power movements to fuel your exploration into Black history and joy.

People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry

The best-selling author of Beach Read is back with a novel worthy of your vacation book bag. Two long-distance best friends have nothing in common except the week of vacation they take every summer for the last decade - until they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since. As life goes on, they realize they haven’t been happy since the last trip they took. The best friends agree to one more vacation to fix everything - will they get around the one big truth standing in their way? Henry’s latest will have you in your vacation glow page after page.

The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba by Chanel Cleeton

Hot girl summer is overrated - if you want a strong girl summer, read this revolutionary story from New York Times best-selling author Chanel Cleeton. Inspired by true events, this book is about legendary Cuban woman Evangelina Cisneros (spoiler alert: she’s the most beautiful girl in Cuba) who changed the course of history. Amidst the revolution from Spanish oppression, Evangelina is unjustly imprisoned in a notorious-Havana women’s jail, where she dreams of a free Cuba. Soon her image is splashed across newspapers as “The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba” and she becomes a rallying cry for American intervention. 

Seven Days in June by Tia Williams

Jodi Picoult, queen of the summer read, calls this book “a smart, sexy testament to Black joy, to the well of strength from which women draw, and to tragic romances that mature into second chances.” This ain’t your typical frenzied fling story, ladies. When Shane and Eva meet at a literary event, sparks fly and buried traumas are uncovered. They pretend not to have known each other, or to have been secretly writing each other in their books over the years. In the next seven days in a steamy Brooklyn summer, they reconnect. Will they fizzle, or stick around to help each other heal?

This list is brought to you in collaboration with @BookSparks.

Compiled and curated by Grace Fell of BookSparks:

Grace Fell is a graduate of The University of Arizona and lives in quaint and quirky Tucson, AZ with her cat Savanna and her library of books. In addition to books, she loves supporting all things local, getting her workday vibes just right, and going on walks with cloudy sunsets.

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